Teens June 19, 2017 Issue

Into—and out of—the woods

Emma Schaefer

It was a week before my high school’s performance of Into the Woods. There was a lot of talk among my fellow cast members about how people usually get run down and sick before performances. I didn’t want to let this frighten me, but I was a bit worried. I was playing Cinderella, and we were not double casted, which meant there were no backup actors in the event that someone was unable to perform. Even though I wasn’t sick, the thought and pressure of “I can’t get sick right now” loomed over me like a dark cloud.

Then, four nights before the first performance, I woke up in the middle of the night and felt my throat scrape as I swallowed. Although it was difficult, I quickly shut out the thought of “What’s gonna happen if I can’t perform?” Instead of worrying, I thought about what I’d learned in the Christian Science Sunday School.

In Sunday School we’d been talking about the beginning of the book of Genesis and how there are two contradictory creation stories. We discussed the differences—how in the first story, in Genesis, chapter one, God makes man in His image and likeness and establishes everything in His creation as “very good,” while in the second story man is made out of the dust of the ground. The first story explains the facts of spiritual creation, while the second is the mistaken view of creation—a belief that everything is material and a mixture of good and evil.

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